Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Receives NIH Award to Promote Inclusive Excellence in Biomedical Sciences
$16 million will fund a multi-institution effort to study, implement, and evaluate evidence-based diversity approaches
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has been awarded a five-year, $16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to foster inclusive excellence in the biomedical sciences using evidence-based approaches.
The NIH Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) initiative award fuels a multi-institution effort to identify and implement new strategies to recruit faculty members from groups underrepresented in medicine by supporting faculty development, mentoring, sponsorship, and promotion.
Icahn Mount Sinai aims to recruit and hire 12 faculty members from underrepresented groups across four research areas and institutes: The Friedman Brain Institute, the Institute for Health Equity Research, The Tisch Cancer Institute, and the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute.
Icahn Mount Sinai will work closely with six leading institutions—Cornell University, Drexel University, Florida State University, San Diego State University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Morehouse School of Medicine—that will also receive FIRST grant funding. Morehouse, an established partner of Icahn Mount Sinai, will serve as the Coordination and Evaluation Center for the FIRST grant.
The Center for Scientific Diversity at Icahn Mount Sinai, a major driving force behind Icahn Mount Sinai’s FIRST grant, was established to foster, develop, and assess empirically supported practices that promote and enhance scientific innovation, diversity, and equitable advancement within the biomedical investigator workforce. The Center was founded in 2020 by Emma K. T. Benn, DrPH, MPH, who is one of four Principal Investigators (PIs) for the NIH FIRST grant, Associate Professor of Population Health Science and Policy, and Associate Dean for Faculty Well-being and Development at Icahn Mount Sinai. It has served as an “incubator lab” to identify strategies that will increase the research success and advancement of underrepresented faculty and strengthen the pipeline of underrepresented trainees in the biomedical research workforce.
“Obtaining this level of support in an inaugural year is not only an extraordinary achievement but also a mark of the Center’s expertise in and commitment to inclusive excellence,” said Dr. Benn. “This grant builds upon the Center’s foundation to promote and sustain academic cultures that equitably recruit, retain, and advance underrepresented faculty while also developing, implementing, and evaluating innovative strategies, like the proposed cluster cohort hiring strategy in the NIH FIRST Award. This award also speaks to the longstanding work at Icahn Mount Sinai to support underrepresented faculty.”
The newly created Center for Scientific Diversity represents one of many milestones of Icahn Mount Sinai’s institutional commitment to diversifying its biomedical workforce. “The Center for Scientific Diversity brings together voices and talents across multiple academic departments at Mount Sinai with the shared goal of developing and implementing best practices for diversifying the biomedical research workforce while promoting a transformative culture of inclusive excellence. In that sense, our goals are perfectly aligned with the mission of this innovative funding mechanism. We will be well positioned to share our lived experience with colleagues at academic medical centers nationwide,” says Kirk Campbell, MD, a PI of the grant, Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine, Vice Chair for Diversity and Inclusion, and Director of the Nephrology Fellowship Program, Icahn Mount Sinai.
Another important milestone at Icahn Mount Sinai that has laid the bedrock of the institution’s commitment to antiracism was the 2020 establishment of the Institute for Health Equity Research (IHER), whose Co-Director, Lynne D. Richardson, MD, is also a PI on the grant. Dr. Richardson is Professor of Emergency Medicine, and Population Health Science and Policy, and Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine for the Mount Sinai Health System. IHER was founded to study how systems have led to groups of individuals being disproportionately and unjustly impacted by inequitable policies and practices that lead to excess illness, suffering, and death.
“We are deeply honored to receive this generous gift from the NIH. We join an impressive cohort of partner institutions who will collaborate in this urgent and important endeavor. We are mission-driven in our pursuit of diversity and inclusion in academic medicine and research, and together, we will develop evidence-based strategies that create long-lasting systemic change,” says Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System.
“We are absolutely thrilled by this news and looking forward to working with the NIH FIRST cohort of schools in our shared vision of greater diversity among our faculty in the biomedical sciences,” says Eric Nestler, MD, PhD, the grant’s fourth PI, Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, Director of The Friedman Brain Institute, and Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs. Icahn Mount Sinai’s involvement in the NIH FIRST initiative will build upon the institution’s earlier groundwork to address faculty diversity, most notably its recently launched Biomedical Laureates Program; Dr. Nestler was an early champion of this effort, which announced its first faculty appointments in June.
“With the generous support of the NIH, we now feel that we are truly equipped to bring forward meaningful change. What we know from studying the careers of underrepresented groups in academic medicine is that our strategies on an individual level can be successful, but to drive a level of change that is institutional and systemic, we need an approach that is integrated,” says Dr. Nestler.
Click here to watch a video to learn more about these efforts and the work of the Center for Scientific Diversity at Icahn Mount Sinai.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with 48,000 employees working across eight hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 600 research and clinical labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.
Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 9,000 primary and specialty care physicians and 11 free-standing joint-venture centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report's® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2024-2025.
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